WN8 and Spotting Damage

[Shadivak 0]

I find it almost criminal that a game where I did 5,170 spotting damage and 870 damage, ends up as 1,221 WN8. Meanwhile, a game where I did 1,108 damage with a charity frag is 2042.... Is there a reason WN8 hasn't adjusted to give spotting damage more weight?

[simba90 100]

WN8 is a zombie, it should have been dead and buried years ago but players keep insisting on using it to judge skill. Its been more or less broken since the introduction of T10 lights and decision not to reset statistics for all of the LTs that were massively rebalanced.

Go have a read of the WN8 thread and see what the developers have to say about the metric.

IIRC the consensus is the WG PR is the best metric we have currently when combined with winrate and dpg.

edit:

Here is the link to post I was loosely referencing.

 

[Private_Miros 2,966]

The fact that WN8 is a relic by now aside there's a few points:

1. it was developed with the tools available. Damage upon assistance was simply not available as a data input - and still isn't for the whole account, only in recents.
2. WN8 certainly, never, at any point, was meant as a measure for performance in single battle. It was meant as a global performance scale.
3. LTs generally have been extremely good for WN8 farming since if you play them well, you generally also get a lot of late game damage and kills, even if the occasional large spotting game goes "unrewarded" in that particular game WN8 wise. It's a typical case of postponed rewards. Play well in general, and in general you'll get a high rating on them. You'd really need to get out of your way not to shoot tanks to get low WN8 in LTs while scouting well.
4. Why is it always the players in the WN8 bracket of bad to average that react with so much indignation to this? You should be happy to have had a great game in combined damage, rather than focus on the WN8 for that game. If anything focus on all the other games where you get 1221 WN8 and lower and didn't do 6k combined. That's where the improvement is to be found.

[Shadivak 0]

12 hours ago, Private_Miros said:

The fact that WN8 is a relic by now aside there's a few points:

1. it was developed with the tools available. Damage upon assistance was simply not available as a data input - and still isn't for the whole account, only in recents.
2. WN8 certainly, never, at any point, was meant as a measure for performance in single battle. It was meant as a global performance scale.
3. LTs generally have been extremely good for WN8 farming since if you play them well, you generally also get a lot of late game damage and kills, even if the occasional large spotting game goes "unrewarded" in that particular game WN8 wise. It's a typical case of postponed rewards. Play well in general, and in general you'll get a high rating on them. You'd really need to get out of your way not to shoot tanks to get low WN8 in LTs while scouting well.
4. Why is it always the players in the WN8 bracket of bad to average that react with so much indignation to this? You should be happy to have had a great game in combined damage, rather than focus on the WN8 for that game. If anything focus on all the other games where you get 1221 WN8 and lower and didn't do 6k combined. That's where the improvement is to be found.

I just find it silly because it's what a lot of people judge "skill" off of. I really couldn't care less about it, personally. I just play to have fun, and try to win. I tend to play very aggressively on my light tanks so I either have a fantastic game, or I die in the first minute. Especially since I am almost always solo pubbing. I just thought it was strange that it's still what people look at and it really doesn't account for true scouting at all.

I'm really just looking for a better tool to judge my long term performance.

[Private_Miros 2,966]

25 minutes ago, Shadivak said:

I just find it silly because it's what a lot of people judge "skill" off of. I really couldn't care less about it, personally. I just play to have fun, and try to win. I tend to play very aggressively on my light tanks so I either have a fantastic game, or I die in the first minute. Especially since I am almost always solo pubbing. I just thought it was strange that it's still what people look at and it really doesn't account for true scouting at all.

Sigh..

Firstly, you cared enough to make a whine thread here.

Secondly, people judge skill on the basis of it, since it's all things considered a good global skill measuring stick on the macro scale. Someone with 1k WN8 isn't going to be worth it by any standards. Someone with 2.5k WN8 might be good, but you need to review tanks and tiers played to get a complete picture.

Thirdly, compared to someone with 2k or 3k WN8, you have a lot less fantastic games. That shows in the stats. As explained above someone with 3k WN8 in his scouts will have more 5k spotting games as well.

Fourthly, most good players solo pub since marking is basically all what most play for.

Fifthly, platooning is worse for WN8 than playing solo.

[Folterknecht 2,257]

2 minutes ago, Private_Miros said:

Fifthly, platooning is worse for WN8 than playing solo.

At a certain skill level ... and he s far away from it.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,022]

Its just a method of quickly determining skill level, with flaws just like win rate. If you combine WN8 with Win rate and average tier, you can generally figure out a person's skill level with high enough accuracy without actually looking at their individual stats in tanks.

 

If you want to improve your game, you need do what it takes to win games. It just so happens that most of the time, you need to do damage to win games.

[PityFool 7,737]

4 hours ago, Shadivak said:

I just find it silly because it's what a lot of people judge "skill" off of. I really couldn't care less about it, personally. I just play to have fun, and try to win. I tend to play very aggressively on my light tanks so I either have a fantastic game, or I die in the first minute. Especially since I am almost always solo pubbing. I just thought it was strange that it's still what people look at and it really doesn't account for true scouting at all.

I'm really just looking for a better tool to judge my long term performance.

You are well below average.

Here's some advice, stop looking at WN8. Just stop. Focus entirely on learning to win more games and you'll get better.

[Shadivak 0]

8 hours ago, PityFool said:

You are well below average.

Here's some advice, stop looking at WN8. Just stop. Focus entirely on learning to win more games and you'll get better.

 

Well below average? Based on?

[Private_Miros 2,966]

19 minutes ago, Shadivak said:

 

Well below average? Based on?

The average for players with over 10k battles is somewhere around 51-52% and 1300-1400 WN8.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,022]

Blaming how the statistics work isn't going to make you a better player.

 

Doing what it takes to win and learning how to react to what happens in the game will.

 

If you are coming here to have a whinge about how X metric doesnt transfer well into Y statistic, this isn't the forum for you.

 

If you want to learn what you are doing wrong and what you can improve on, there is plenty of content here and enough posters here that can guide you to what you can and should be doing or looking out for to play better.

 

[sr360 4,987]

Not to pile on, but WN8 isn’t a single-game metric, it’s a metric that was designed for an overview. IIRC it was calibrated for 5000 games and even “recent” WN8 is a misuse of the metric.